PowerCom’s smart home devices are the smart new way to manage utility consumption in the home. The smart meters, in-home-displays (IHDs), and appliance meters provides greater visibility and control in an easy to use interface; which can contribute to lowering utility bills and smoothing peak demand.

Personal Energy Management

The low cost in-home displays provide real-time current consumption data (including historical) of total household as well as individual appliances in kw/h and hourly cost. They also allow customers to schedule the operation of the attached appliances. If pre-payment meters are installed, the In-Home Displays have the capability to allow the customers to enter their pre-payment tokens.

The in-home display units communicate to the Appliance Monitoring & Control Devices inside the house (via RF or PLC). When regulations permit, utilities can remotely limit the use of auxiliary customer equipment during peak energy periods (air conditioning, water heater, under-floor heating, swimming pool pump, etc.).

With the availability of home-based technology utilities can more cost?effectively communicate with their customers, and provide more efficient handling of customer queries relating to bills and consumption. By showing energy consumption and cost of operating individual appliances in real-time consumers may shift some consumption away from peak periods.

Micro Generation Monitoring

In consumer generated energy production installations Powercom’s smart metering platform reliably and economically enables consumers to monitor and control micro generation of renewables in real time. PowerCom’s three phase smart meters and APM device measures and transmits generated energy data, calculating both Import and Export of Active Energy for calculating +A and –A individually. A dynamic controller can provide the ability to determine whether the energy produced by PV is used by the consumer or sold back to the grid.

Electric Vehicle Charging

Based on real-time two-way communication, Powercom supports utilities as well as consumers to monitor and control EV charging. The PowerCom system enables the automatic initiation of charging during off-peak periods, enabling the billing of the customer with a step-inclined tariff.

If demand from EV charging is causing instability to the grid or when the peak consumption capacity of the distribution transformer is nearing critical limits, PowerCom's closed loop/real time demand response system, incorporating “under-frequency” systems and appliance control devices (APM), reacts within 70 milliseconds to automatically disconnect supply to EV charging under the particular transformer branch. Automatic reconnection occurs when a pre-defined recovery value is reached. All these values can be set / adjusted remotely by the utility from the control center.

Energy Storage

When energy storage becomes available PowerCom’s smart meters can automatically control, according to a modifiable profile, when the energy storage systems are charging or discharging. The profile can be modified by the consumer or by the utility through the PowerCom's command center software. The logic embedded in the PowerCom smart meters enable the energy storage system to be charged during the lowest tariff periods.